They drove over the bridge and paid a toll for the privilege. It was Sunday-morning quiet. They’d taken Ben’s car because it had a bigger boot for Lexi to spread out in. Sometimes she’d sit up and look at them with her head resting between the headrests of the back seat. Cute enough to elicit a human response. A ‘Will you look at that face,’ or ‘Hello, gorgeous.’ The words didn’t matter, it was all about the tone. For the most part, she seemed happy to lie down, as chilled as usual.

Ben drove. Anna was content to let the radio provide background noise while Ben chatted. But her responses became shorter and increasingly monosyllabic until Ben turned to her with a look that didn’t need speech or embellishment. He knew her well. They were tuned to the same emotional station, and in that moment, Anna sensed how lucky she was – and not for the first time. Understanding was not to be sniffed at.

‘You’re thinking about your mother, aren’t you?’ Ben said.

Anna shrugged.

‘The way she is, what she says, it’s classic disinhibition. Remember what I said about comportment? When it starts to fail, it gets hard to see yourself as others do. It can come across as being rude and harsh. It’s especially common in frontotemporal dementia.’

Anna listened without speaking. This morning Ben had been her lover. Now he was being her friend and, because it was his nature, a doctor. He’d seen her mother, heard her outburst but not mentioned it since. Not until now.

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Pretty much. I think the clue is in the abandoned mental hospital we’re about to visit.’

She toyed with the idea of telling him it was becoming a habit. Shaw had taken her to a similar sort of place in North Wales, were they’d found Krastev’s body. But that was work; this was personal. Very personal.

It took them an hour and a half, turning north at Junction 24 off the M4, up through Raglan and on across open countryside. They’d built sanatoriums away from centres of population. Deliberately, for obvious reasons. Even Ryegrove was positioned across the river from Bristol city centre. Yet Anna had forgotten how empty parts of Wales could be. When they arrived at the village of Talgarth, Ben turned off and parked near a nature reserve. He’d downloaded a map and followed it in, walking along a back road that wound around the perimeter of the old hospital and around to the front.

Talgarth asylum was solidly built of grey stone, had two storeys and a clock tower; all boarded up, fenced off and abandoned. Haunted house material. One look made Anna shiver.

‘Now I remember,’ she said.

They’d come alone. Her and her mother. Never Kate and never her father. She could not understand why. But looking up at the gates, memory of those boring Sunday afternoon journeys was suddenly vivid. Her mother driving, Anna listening to Aunty Mary’s story. Of how she was quiet – like Anna – and how she was indulged by her own parents, allowed to withdraw and kept away from other people because she was different. Always checking things over and over, off in her own little world. And of how Sian was convinced that had Mary’s parents been firmer, stricter, the odd little girl might have blossomed. Sian blamed her grandmother. Smothering and weak. Didn’t everyone have problems? You worked through them. Got on with it. And now here was poor Mary having electrodes attached to her head every day and drugged to the eyeballs.

They’d drive up and park and sign in with the nurse on reception. Sian had been often and didn’t need to be shown up to Mary’s room. Anna would go, seeing people dressed in gowns and in wheelchairs, some of them human statues, others moving like snakes, dancing to a tune no one else heard. She knew now that those movements, those writhing distortions, had a big and terrifying name: choreoathetoid. Nothing but a side effect of the drugs the patients needed to keep their brains docile. But at the time terrifying to a little girl.

But not as much as Aunt Mary was.

She’d sit in her chair, eyes open, half hunched forward, her hair hanging, mouth drooling. Catatonic was the word her mother used. Sian would sit and talk and make Anna sit, too. And the monologue would be carping and some of it – most of it – spoken for Anna’s benefit. At the time, she hadn’t realised why she had to go. But now, standing outside the gates of the huge asylum, she understood.

The visits hadn’t been for Mary or Sian. They’d been for Anna. A warning. That was why her father never went. Her mother actively discouraged him because her agenda did not include the man who might have seen what she was doing and stopped her. And Kate would have been simply an encumbrance. Kate needed no encouragement or warning to be normal. Kate would have jabbered all the way there and all the way back and demanded to know why Aunty Mary was dribbling. Why she’d sometimes be talking to someone only she could see. Kate would have been an unnecessary distraction because these visits had purpose. Sian wanted Anna, her quiet, withdrawn daughter, to see what might happen if she didn’t snap out of it and start being normal.

Anna shuddered.

She felt a pressure on her arm and looked down to see Ben’s hand.

‘You OK?’

Anna nodded. ‘I don’t even know why Mary was here. If she even had a diagnosis.’

‘Sometimes there wasn’t a diagnosis. Strange and inexplicable behaviour was enough in these old asylums. And once patients were institutionalised, it could become very difficult for them to leave. They’d use insulin therapy to induce a coma sometimes, then medicate when the patient came around.’

Anna shivered.

‘Let’s walk.’ Ben touched her arm. ‘If we don’t, Lexi will explode.’

They did walk. Around the perimeter of the huge complex. And as they did, Anna opened up and talked about her visits and her mother. Half a mile from the car on their return leg, she’d finished vomiting all the poison up.

‘Ignorance is a dangerous thing, but it’s even worse when it’s driven by love,’ Ben said.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

‘Why, do you feel bad?’

‘Yes. I’m almost thirty and I’ve just realised my mother thinks I’m mentally ill. Has probably always thought that.’

‘Some people struggle with difference.’

‘Is that what I am? Different?’

‘You know you are. It’s what makes you… special.’

‘Wow. Different and special. Should I wear a bell?’

She was angling for a fight, but Ben simply grinned. ‘Oh, and let’s not forget feisty.’

He stepped away to avoid her half-hearted blow. He was right. Her difference even had a label, given to her through psychometric testing during her time at university: INTJ.

Introversion. Intuition. Thinking. Judgement.

Big words that Ben had distilled down to the bone. ‘Yep, that’s you. An idealistic cynic who takes nothing at face value.’

‘Seeing her aunt like that must have been awful for your mother,’ Ben said.

Anna shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you have anything bad to say about anyone?’

‘I have a list.’

‘I bet it’s a short one.’

‘I’m not making excuses for your mother’s behaviour, Anna, but you survived and proved her wrong. She probably has a hard time reconciling that. And now it’s set up a conflict in a mind that doesn’t know what’s appropriate.’

‘What if she’s right, though?’

Ben gave her a scrunched-up smile. ‘Where’s all this coming from, Anna? The case in Ryegrove?’

Anna shrugged. ‘Maybe. Something happened there, Ben, something bad.’

‘Isn’t that what you do? Catch the bad guys?’

‘I try.’

‘So, what’s different about this one?’

‘I don’t know. According to my mother, I’m just a hop and a skip away from being there myself.’

‘I can see she’s upset you.’

Nothing new there, thought Anna. She paused and turned to him. ‘I hate you having to deal with my baggage.’

‘It’s nice to know you have some because you know I do. Up to now I thought you were a superbeing. Flawless in all senses of the word. Difficult to live up to that.’

‘Flaw-full, more like.’

‘No, I’ve had a very close look. OK, there is a little naevus in the shape of New Zealand under your left breast, but on the whole…’

Lexi, caught up by a rabbit hole, looked up to see if they were following and noting their lack of progress decided to bound towards them at full tilt. She made an impressive sight, ears back, tail up, full of the sheer enjoyment of running.

Ben kneeled down and held out his arms. ‘Come on, girl!’

Lexi decided not to slow down until it was too late and cannoned into him, sending him sprawling on the rough grass, much to his delight. ‘Whoa, high tackle,’ he said grabbing at the dog and pulling her to him. She responded by attempting to lick his face while he half-heartedly covered it up.

‘Lexi, stop it,’ Anna said. ‘That’s my job.’ She held out a hand and helped Ben to his feet. He stood, closer than he needed, and didn’t let go of her hand, his expression suddenly serious.

‘Your mother’s conflicted, probably always has been. But she’s going to need your help. My guess is she thought she was helping you by bringing you here.’

‘It didn’t help.’ She looked around. ‘I can’t believe I blocked it out. But being here now gives me the willies.’

‘Then perhaps it did help. Perhaps it gave you a strong self-preservation mechanism. A determination to be yourself whatever the cost.’

‘Cost?’

‘Try not to hate her, Anna. Right or wrong, she thought she was helping.’

Anna looked away to stop him seeing the tears suddenly stinging her eyes. He was right. About everything. Her mother had so many fixed ideas about the world. It had driven Anna away and, ultimately, her father. And Anna did try not to hate. She tried very hard. If not for her own sake, then for Kate’s. When she turned back, Ben was on his knees next to a sitting Lexi, his arm around the dog, who was watching her curiously as Ben whispered in her ear.

‘Tell Anna she isn’t that little girl anymore. Tell her she’s all grown up now. Tell her she’s very clever and the bad men who have done all those bad things ought to watch out because she’s coming for them. And they better be scared. Very scared.’

Anna used the flattened tips of three fingers to wipe her eyes. She was smiling as she reached into her pocket and threw Lexi a biscuit. The dog caught it in mid-air, pulverising it with three crunches.

‘And what does the doctor want as his reward for being my therapist?’ Anna said as Ben brushed dirt from his knees.

‘How about a pub lunch somewhere dog-friendly?’

‘I think we could stretch to that.’

‘Right. You google the pubs, I’ll drive.’